Volatility
May 28, 2025 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, TBF, Volatility |
Today’s Hot Money Moves NOW video is Short the 30-year treasury. In my last video, I talked about how complacent the market seems—but one area where there’s definitely no complacency is the long end of the bond market, especially the 30-year Treasuries. Investors worldwide are worried about rising U.S. deficits, soaring debt interest payments, and Congress’s inability to pass a budget on time. If you want to capitalize on this, one way is to short long-term Treasuries. You could use options, but timing those can be tricky. Instead, I recommend the ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TBF), which moves inversely to long-term Treasury bonds. It’s not cheap (0.95% expense ratio), but it’s up 16.3% in 2024 and has solid momentum with a gain of 6.76% in the last three months. I’m adding TBF to my Volatility Portfolio and my Jubak Picks Portfolio as a hedge against Treasury risks. You may want to wait until the spending bill feels a bit more settled, but I’m jumping in early to track how it plays out.
May 26, 2025 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, Stock Alerts, TBF, Volatility |
I’m adding shares of the ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TBF) to my Jubak Picks and Volatility portfolios tomorrow, May 28, as a play in the continued decline in prices at the long end of the Treasury market.
May 15, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term, VIX, Volatility |
The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) dropped another 4.24% today to 17.84. I think, once again, the financial markets have become way too complacent about risk. And so it’s time to buy Call Options on the Vix “fear index,” betting that at least one of the many potential volatility events on the horizon puts some fear back into the markets.
May 9, 2025 | Daily JAM, Volatility |
22.53. That was the close on the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) today. It’s safe to say that stock market volatility is way down. Back on April 21, the “fear index” was at 34.21. On April 8, at the bottom of the turmoil that followed on the April 2 tariffs, the index hit 52.33. But even before that spike, fear had been climbing among investors to 27.86 on March 10 from the very complacent 16.43 on January 31. That was substantially below the 10-year average for the VIX at 18.66. So now the question is how low the VIX will go. And when will it be time to buy VIX Call Options again on a bet that volatility will return.
April 28, 2025 | Daily JAM, VIX, Volatility |
Today, Monday April 28, I’m selling my last two Call Options on the VIX, the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index. Not because we’re done with volatility. No way. I expect lots more volatility in the weeks and months ahead. And I expect to put this trade on again. But because these two options expire on May 21
April 3, 2025 | Daily JAM, Special Reports, Volatility |
Today the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 4.25%, dropping into a correction. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 5.43%, also into a correction. The small cap Russell 2000 lost 6.59%. We don’t have to search for the cause of todays drop: yesterday President Donald Trump announced tariffs with a global minimum rate of 10% and rates on individual U.S. trading partners that included a 20% tariff on the European Union and an additional 34% tariff on Chinese goods. The fear is that the tariff increases will set off a global trade war of retaliation, and that the tariffs will push the United States into either a recession or stagflation. Take your pick about which to fear more. So what do you do NOW? That’s the topic of this Emergency Special Report.
April 3, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
After weeks of trying to believe that President Donald Trump wasn’t serious about imposing massive tariffs on the rest of the world, Wall Street heard president Trump do exactly that from the Rose Garden yesterday. And today stocks opened down biggly. At 11:20 a.m. New York time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 4.21%. The NASDAQ Composite and the NASDAQ 100 were lower by 5.24% and 4.64%, respectively. The small cap Russell 2000 had tumbled 4.63%. Shares of Apple (AAPL) were down 8.64%. Nike (NKE) was off 11.79%. Nvidia (NVDA) was lower by 6.66%. Why the huge drop?
March 24, 2025 | BABA, Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, Short Term, Stock Alerts, Volatility |
Today I added shares of Tencent (TCEHY) and the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) to my portfolios at least partly on the strength of China’s AI rally. Tomorrow, March 25, I’d adding shares of Alibaba (BABA) to my Jubak Picks and Volatility portfolios.
March 23, 2025 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, Long Term, Mid Term, Stock Alerts, TCEHY, Top 50 Stocks, Volatility |
On Monday, March 24, I’m adding these Tencent ADRs (TCEHY) TO my Jubak Picks and Volatility Portfolios.
March 23, 2025 | Daily JAM, FXI, Jubak Picks, Perfect Five-ETFs, Volatility |
Just because we’ve seen this page from the play book before and just because I’m skeptical about the long-term effects of this policy doesn’t mean I don’t want to own the China rally now. On Monday March 24, I’m adding the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) to my Perfect Five ETF Portfolio and to my Jubak Picks and Volatility portfolios. (In the Perfect Five ETF portfolio I’m replacing my India ETF with this China ETF.)
March 17, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Volatility |
Today’s Hot Money Moves NOW: Buy VIX Volatility Call Options. Toward the end of January, I bought VIX Call Options, hoping to make money as volatility increased in the market. I bought a VIX call with a strike of 20, and a VIX call with a strike of 26–both with May 21, 2025 expirations. Both of these buys were up about 40% before Friday’s snap-back rally. And looking at probable “events” I think volatility is going to increase in the second half of March. But this week we may see some optimism bring the VIX down and you may be able to buy more options on that future volatility at a temporarily depressed price. I would look to buy these options this week and hold for the next three weeks or so, through more tariff uncertainty in April and sell before the May 21 expiration. For more detail om my VIX options buys see the Volatility Portfolio on my subscription JubakAM.com site.
March 16, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Volatility |
Friday’s snap-back rally took a big bite out of the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX). The VIX dropped 11.72%, or 2.89, to 21.77. But the plunge in Call options on the VIX was even bigger with the VIX Call option with a strike price of 20 and an expiration of May 2025 falling 23.34% and the VIX Call option with a strike price of 26 and an expiration of May 2025 26.000 falling 31.34%. (I’m citing the action on these two options because they are the Calls that I own in my Volatility Portfolio.)
This is exactly the opportunity I flagged last week to add more volatility bets without paying too much after the run upon options prices that came to a screeching halt on Friday.
